


dreams from across lake tarawera

by sassafras_tea



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 05:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20304553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassafras_tea/pseuds/sassafras_tea
Summary: After he falls out of the helicopter, half awake and half asleep from blood loss, Travis spends his hallucinatory four split seconds in the air thinking of Maddie. For as long as he has to think, he wonders if she’ll find his body. He doesn’t wonder if she’ll be fine without him; he knows that she will be. More than that, he worries about what he’ll do without Maddie.He wonders if he’ll ever see her again. He realizes, suddenly, tragically, that he won’t ever be able to see her again, that even having such a thought was useless. He’ll be dead, a mess of bullet holes, shredded intestines, half-dry, sticky blood, infected blue eyes, and gnawing teeth. No mind, no heart, no soul.No Maddie.It’s a sobering thought, and a part of him, a deeply ironic part of him, laughs at the Gothic Romanticism of it all.He dies laughing, kind of.





	dreams from across lake tarawera

author's note:

So, I kind of felt like Travis' character arc was left unfinished in the show and I wanted more for him, as well as resolution for his relationship with Madison. This fic does include some Maori (Te Reo) phrases, words and a sentence here or there, but unfortunately most of the resources I found online were a bit iffy. If there are grammatical or linguistic errors with the translated sentences, I apologize, and I'd love to hear from Maori/ Te Reo speakers if there's something that can be improved upon. As well, I am not Maori myself, although I am an indigenous person, and I tried my best to not only be culturally sensitive and accurate, but as well to create a realistic and nuanced portrayal of Travis (and his relationship to his culture). I would love feedback from Maori readers on more cultural specifics/ whether I did okay. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

After he falls out of the helicopter, half awake and half asleep from blood loss, Travis spends his hallucinatory four split seconds in the air thinking of Maddie. For as long as he has to think, he wonders if she’ll find his body. He doesn’t wonder if she’ll be fine without him; he knows that she will be. More than that, he worries about what he’ll do without Maddie.  
He wonders if he’ll ever see her again. He realizes, suddenly, tragically, that he won’t ever be able to see her again, that even having such a thought was useless. He’ll be dead, a mess of bullet holes, shredded intestines, half-dry, sticky blood, infected blue eyes, and gnawing teeth. No mind, no heart, no soul.  
No Maddie.  
It’s a sobering thought, and a part of him, a deeply ironic part of him, laughs at the Gothic Romanticism of it all.  
He dies laughing, kind of.

Travis doesn’t die immediately. There’s a strange interperiod of floating he does, suspended between some sense of wakefulness and sleep. He can’t quite figure out what it means, what it is, other than that eventually it’ll end. Does he believe in somewhere, after death? He can’t remember. He used to be able to.

All he can think of is his grandmother’s funeral in Rotorua; he can remember the glittering frost on the ground, the ever-so slight chill of the mid-July air, the itchy polyester material of his black button down shirt rubbing uncomfortably against his arms, the look on his father’s face when they lowered his grandmother into the ground. He remembers sitting at the edge of Lake Tarawera, hours after the funeral, his fingers grazing the damp soil, gliding over the frosted ground, thinking about the eruption of Mount Tarawera, which buried an entire village in molten lava and ash. He remembers thinking of all the people who burned to death as he looked out at the waves gently lapping at the shore, about the destruction of the Pink and White Terraces, about the eel and rainbow trout who survived a natural disaster to swim in Lake Tarawera in the summer months. For a moment, he’s glad his grandmother died in her sleep. He’s glad that he too won’t ever have to die in a way as horrific, as painful, as wretched, as burning to death. He doesn’t remember much else.

When he wakes up, he wakes up in their bed, surrounded by cotton sheets and a grey duvet. Hilariously, when he looks a little closer, he notices that the sheets are mismatched shades of off white and pepto bismol pink, leftover from when Nick, high, haphazardly threw a bright red shirt into the wash with new sheets that Maddie had bought the day before. She had thrown a fit, he thinks blearily. He drags himself out of bed, running a hand over his face, and heads to the kitchen, half expecting Maddie to be leaning against the counter, sipping from her mug of black coffee. She isn’t.

He furrows his brows. Where’s Maddie? And Alicia? Nick, even? The edges of a memory creep up from the back of his mind, and instinctively, he turns the faucet of the sink. Water gushes from the tap and spirals down the drain. He’d fixed the leak, hadn’t he?

“Maddie?” He calls, her name echoing around the empty rooms. He listens for Maddie’s response, for the telltale patter of water from Alicia’s morning shower. Nothing.  
They wouldn’t leave without him. So where were they?  
He grabs his phone from the counter and instinctively calls Maddie. The dial tone stretches out into the empty space of the house, and her voice rings out against the walls.

“Hi, this is Madison Clark. I can’t reach the phone right now but, leave your number and name, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!”

“Maddie, it’s me. Where are you?” he begins pacing around the living room couch. “I can’t find you or Alicia anywhere. You must’ve forgotten to leave a note. Anyway, call me back when you can. Bye.” He tries Alicia next, then Nick and gets nothing. In a last ditch attempt, at the edge of genuine panic, he calls Liza. Maybe she’d seen them? Liza’s voice crackles over the phone through static and fuzzed out white noise.

“Travis? Oh my God…”

“Liza? You haven’t heard from Maddie have you? Or Alicia? I can’t find anyone and I’m starting to get worried. They wouldn’t just disappear like this… ”

“Listen Travis,” she starts, pausing, thinking about what to say next. “I need to come over.” she says abruptly. He scrunches his brows together, and stops in his tracks, halfway around his eleventh round around the coffee table. His fingers start tapping a nervous pattern against his pant leg.

“What’s wrong, Liza? You’re not making sense, what happened?”

“I’ll be there soon,” she says, and hangs up.

Liza arrives at his door in a pair of scrubs and with her hair pulled in a low, tight, chignon. She walks in immediately, quickly glancing at the interior of his and Maddie’s home, her eyebrows scrunched.

“Liza, what the hell is going on? Where is everyone?”

Her lips pressed tightly together in a thin, flat line, Liza sighs and goes over to Travis, carefully wrapping an arm around his back. She closes her eyes, and he tentatively embraces her.

“Are you okay?” he asks when she pulls away. She shifts her gaze down to the floor, the corners of her eyes red and watery, and Travis feels a jolt of panic press down his spine. Liza almost never cried; he’d seen her cry maybe a grand total of four times over the course of their marriage.

She nods, and says: “We should sit down for this.” He raises his eyebrows.

“Uh. Okay.”

She sits in the chair carefully, and asks: “What do you remember last?”

He scrunches his eyebrows, giving her a quizzical look. She waves her hand at him impatiently: “Just, what do you remember last?”

“I don’t remember much. I don’t really know.” The image of a helicopter, dropping rapidly out of the sky, fills his head. He smells burning metal, blood, hears Alicia scream. “It’s still a little hazy. Whatever it was, it was bad.” he says, running a hand over his face. Liza’s expression softens, and she awkwardly pats his hand.

“Sleep on it, Trav. You can come by and see me and Chris when you feel better.” She says, standing and pushing out her chair. He nods, already starting to slip back into the haze of sleep.

Liza leaves, and he goes back to bed. He closes the curtains, sunlight bleeding smoothed out rays through the gauze, and he falls asleep. He dreams of a road trip he went on with Maddie, years ago, when he was first falling in love with her, to Alabama.

“I want to show you where I grew up,” she explains, patches of sunlight floating over her cheekbones as she carefully folds one of his plaid shirts into a duffel bag. He nods, watching her.

Raising an eyebrow, he asks: “Are you stealing my clothes?” He shifts closer to her, wrapping a hand around her waist. She turns in his arms to wink at him and laughs, folding herself against him, her hands sliding over his shoulder blades.  
In a pit stop in Arizona, they find a retro diner, and order sunny side up eggs, stacks of pancakes, and cinnamon french toast with maple syrup. They split a strawberry milkshake with a dollop of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top, and Travis feels like he’s reliving his teen years. Along the endless long stretches of road, the double yellow lines uncurl like dual ribbons out before him. The Arizona sky fades into vibrant red and pinks; creamy oranges bleed into lavender purples. He realizes, as he nods off on Maddie’s shoulder, staring out at everything, the whole world laid out before him, that he loves her. He loves her, and he has the rest of his life with her. When he wakes up, streetlights whizzing past the window in Austin, sharp pinpricks of light framing a black sky, Maddie’s arm is draped over him, her fingers running through his hair. She turns to smile at him. He smiles sleepily back, and closes his eyes.

He wakes up in their bed, her name trapped at the back of his throat, Maddie’s blonde hair and her pale green eyes, flashing behind his eyes. With a sigh, he sits up, gets out of bed, throws on a pair of jeans and a button down and turns the Keurig on. Listless, he wanders over to his and Maddie’s bookshelf while the coffee is brewing, the Keurig sputtering gently. His hand drifts over the worn-soft spines of his favorite classics: _Waiariki_, _Their Eyes Were Watching God_, _Slaughterhouse-Five_,_ Pounamu, Pounamu_, and _Villette_. He stops over _Villette_, briefly thinking of all the tumultuous Victorian romances he read in college. He thumbs through its worn pages, and hums at his messy, ink blotted notes in the margins. He sits down at the living room table, and starts reading.

_My godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Breton. Her husband’s family had been residents there for generations, and bore, indeed the name of their birthplace- Bretton of Breton…_

He still can’t remember much about the helicopter crash other than Alicia’s scream, the wind whipping around his face, the feeling of blood soaking through his clothes. He can remember a bit from before that though. He can remember the dirt on his skin, the feeling of a concrete block, heavy and solid and grainy under his calloused hands. He can remember Madison’s whisper in the middle of the night: are you here?, her green eyes almost blue in the light, the gentle rocking of the boat. He can remember the feeling of her hips, muscled and soft at the same time, under his hands. He doesn’t remember everything, only bits and pieces here and there.

He dreams about the motel he and Maddie stayed in over vacation, the blue-grey light of early dawn seeping through the tiny cramped windows, bleeding through the thick curtains. He remembers the sharp line of Maddie’s jaw digging into the middle of his chest, her legs entangled with his, her cold feet pressed flat against his calves, her arm thrown over his torso. He smiles a little to himself, and runs a hand through her blonde waves. Her breathing is steady, even, and he could count her eyelashes.

“Are you awake?” he whispers, watching her eyelids twitch. Her arms tighten around his middle.

“No.” she grumbles, turning her face to press her cheek against his chest, and he stifles a laugh into the pillow. He runs his hand up the vertebrae of her spine, and they both drift back to sleep, content.  
Travis wakes up with a phantom warmth of Madison’s body pressed against his side. His head aches, and if he strains his ears, he can hear cicadas humming. He tries to remember the word for wife in Maori; it’s buried at the back of his mind. Wahine matua. Makau. Head wife, lover. He goes back to sleep dreaming of Madison’s perfume and the smell of her hair.

During the day, he spends a lot of time re-learning Maori nouns, and reading Victorian literature. He starts taking color-coded notes on pristine college-ruled paper, and starts teaching himself about root languages. He spends each day in a kind of haze; he doesn’t need to eat anymore, and he doesn’t have a job anymore. He isn’t ready to talk to Chris yet, he can’t talk to Chris yet, because he still doesn’t fully know what happened. He got snippets, snippets of sunny, humid, heavy air and dry dirt that clung in a film to the inside of his throat. He can remember Chris, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, sitting in the back of a truck. He can remember how his son turned away from him, his dark hair, hair just like his and Liza’s, whipped in thick strands in the wind. He isn’t ready to talk to Chris yet.  
He makes coffee though, just for the pleasure of it, and he makes steaming mugs of tea. Madison’s favorite box of Sleepytime stays unopened on the counter. He wants to leave it for when he sees her next. For whenever she comes back to him.

When he hits the bed this time he goes way back to the beginning, before he was in love with Maddie. Right in the middle of syrup thick tension and misplaced anxiety and giddiness, when he first started working with her. Travis leans against a set of bleachers, multi-colored lights dancing over his head, trap music blaring in his ears. He tugs at his tie uncomfortably, and crosses one leg over the other, sipping from a red solo cup of (now spiked?) fruit punch. Through the crowd of glittering girls and sweaty, lanky boys, a blonde head bobs, patiently wading her way through the crowd. Madison emerges from the mass of bodies, one side of her mouth curving up, as her eyes catch his. He raises his solo cup in a half hearted salute, and she slides in next to him, her spine curving against the bleachers in a pretty arc. Her shoulders drop, and he tries not to notice her collarbone peeking out above the top of her sleeveless A line dress. She’s wearing a kind of black and white gingham pattern with little red heels, which is adorably retro and a little reminiscent of a farm girl. He resists the urge to call her “darlin’” and compare her to Dorothy Gale. Didn’t she say she was from the South? Alabama, maybe? She looks out at the students, the warm pink light flooding the gymnasium. She turns to him, cranes her head towards him so he can hear her. He ignores how her mouth almost brushes the cartilage of his ear.

“So, do you regret signin’ up to be a chaperone?” She asks. He smiles wryly at her.

“What, this? But it’s so much fun.” Travis rolls his eyes, and she knocks her elbow into his arm. He’s smiling again, but this time it’s genuine, and the pattern they’ve created is addictive, playful, like a game of ping pong, back and forth, back and forth; he’s not sure how to stop. He leans towards her a bit:

“I think someone spiked the punch.” Madison’s eyes widen.

“What?! No.” she shakes her head in mock horror, and she scrunches her nose.

“You don’t think we have to tell Artie, do you?”  
He laughs, surprised. She bumps her shoulder against his, and he leans against her comfortably, before pulling away a fraction.

“No, I think we can keep this to ourselves.”

“What did they spike it with, anyway?”

He grins at her, and raises his eyebrows, before toasting to her: “I don’t know, let’s find out.”  
Between the layers of artificial strawberry, chemical orange, and sugar sweet cherry, he can taste the edge of something sharp, fiery and a little acidic. He scrunches his brows.

“Hennessy?”

She raises her eyebrows at him. Stealing his cup right from his grasp, to his absolute astonishment, she takes a sip, her eyebrows furrowing. Her lips pucker a little, and he can’t help but pay attention to the flower shape her mouth is, a carnation tipped upside down.

“Oh yeah. That’s definitely Hennessy. Ew.”

He looks at her in wonder, and even with the red- orange light passing over her face, he’s stunned by the pale ivy green her eyes are, the yellow flecks near her pupils startling him. The side of her mouth tilts up, her white teeth flash in a half smile, and her fingers curl more tightly around the plastic cup. The DJ slows it down, the fluttering, orchestral notes of a slow song trickling in the air. Wordlessly, Madison throws away the cup in a nearby trash can and holds out her hand. Travis ducks his head, smiling, and accepts. She drags him to the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by young, in-love couples swaying to the beat. She loops her arms, carefully, gently, behind his neck, and rests her cheek against his chest. He rests his one hand on her hip, one stretched across her back.

“Did you ever go to dances like this, when you were in high school?” She murmurs, her eyes closed, her head tucked under his chin.

“I went to one or two. They weren’t very memorable.” He admits. Madison huffs out a quiet laugh in response.

“Mine weren’t either. And the guy I went with was the worst.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, Dave Montgomery from junior year. He made out with another girl at the end of the night.”

“Seriously? He sounds like a jackass.”

She hums, and he might be imagining this, but he can almost feel her inching closer to him. He inhales sharply.

“So, where is Mr. Montgomery now?”

Madison looks up at him, the song starts to end, its last notes hanging in the air. He’s tempted to brush his fingers against her cheek, as pink shadows, pink panther rectangles of light curve over the planes of her face. Is she blushing? She smiles, and a little breathlessly says:

“Last I heard, he got caught with an ounce of dope in his car, and now he’s in jail.”

Travis almost doubles over laughing.

Travis wakes up, in the middle of the night, all the breath knocked from his lungs, reaching out instinctively for his wife. She isn’t there. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and counts his breath. One two three four, inhale. One two three four five six seven eight, exhale. He turns on his side and tries to go back to sleep.  
He tosses and turns; he can’t sleep. He sits up against their headboard, flicks on the lamp on his side of the bed. Colorful hazy shapes move past his field of vision, creamsicle orange ovals and indigo squares imprinted on the underside of his eyelids. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, exhaling heavily and running a hand through his bed-head. He reaches for Villette on his nightstand. He starts reading:  
_“Dr. John,” I began.”Love is blind,” but just then a blue subtle ray sped sideways from Dr. John’s eye…_

Travis, when he first starts working at Paul R. Williams High, sees Madison around. Of course he does, he couldn’t not. He spots her for the first time across from him in a staff meeting, an ivy green v-neck silk blouse fluttering against her collarbones, paired with a smart blazer and sensible heels. She had strolled in with a nod and a smile to Artie, and he had been struck by her sharp jaw, the line of her mouth, her smile. There was a part of him, a very real part of him that had immediately felt a sense of dread when he saw her. Mostly because she was striking; she surprised him. There was something about her, and for the life of him he couldn’t put his finger on it. She makes him nervous. What is it about her?  
He sees her in the teacher lounge sometimes, a delicate silver necklace resting in the hollow above her collarbone, her blonde head tilted down as she sips her coffee. She always smiles at him, and he always smiles back, but there’s a part of him that’s terrified of making the first move. He had gotten divorced years ago, but he hadn’t been in a long term relationship since after Liza. He’d spent his whole life with one woman, with Liza, and there was a part of him, a secret, irrational, insecure part of him, that wonders if he just isn’t meant to meet anyone else. He’d gone on dates, singular dates, but none of them had led to anything more. Now he was here, pining after a woman who he hadn’t even officially said hello to. He felt the confusing, syrup thick tension between them, waiting to break, like a rubber band stretched too tight.

One day, he joins Madison in the teacher’s lounge, and he’s determined to say something to her. Maybe small talk about the weather? Maybe a comment on the upcoming staff meeting on interpersonal relationships? Or is that too forward? But just as soon as he’s finally ready to talk to her, even just to say hi, an obnoxious blaring sound rings through the halls. Surprised, he turns to Madison, who’s giving him an equally bemused look. He shrugs, and she smiles, biting her bottom lip. She throws on her light coat, grabs her mug of coffee, and gives him an expectant look. He ducks his head shyly, and follows her out the door towards the emergency exit, the alarm trumpeting in his ears.

“Who do you think did it?” She says, unexpectedly, just as they’re stepping out into the slight chill. He gives her an inquisitive look.

“What makes you think one of the chem teachers didn’t just mess up a demo?”

“Come on,” she whispers “There’s a big precalc exam for the juniors today. And, it’s second period.” It dawns on him what she’s implying.

“You don’t really think..” Madison leans infinitesimally closer to him as students pour out from the building. His arm grazes hers, and he feels an electric jolt fry his nervous system. She raises her steaming mug to her mouth, both palms cupped sweetly around it, he’s struck by how endeared he is by her, by how long and delicate her fingers are. Her burgundy painted nails are slightly chipped at the edges, the whites of her nail bed peeking out like crescent moons during the last stages of a lunar eclipse.

“So?” she says. She cranes her neck, and looks out at the sea of teenagers. “I’d put good money on it being Jamie Mazzatello. Maybe Andrew Howard.”  
He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t know if Jamie has the guts, though. If he was desperate enough, maybe. I think it’s Andrew.”

“Really?” Madison replies, tilting her head to the side.

“Oh yeah, I’ve caught him doing precalc homework in my class.” This startles a laugh out of her, and she turns to face him, a flyaway strand clinging to her cheek. He wants so badly to push it behind her ear, to touch her, but he can’t.

“Okay. I’ll play. I’ll pay you ten bucks if it’s Andrew, and if it’s Jamie then…” she shrugs.

He smiles.

“Alright. Deal.” They shake on it.

At the next staff meeting, Artie walks in shaking his head, obviously frustrated.

“Jamie Mazzatello pulled the fire alarm last week. I had to suspend him.”

Travis slips a ten dollar bill to Madison under the table, and he gets butterflies when she tries to hide her answering smirk from Artie.

He starts gardening during the day, after he finds a packet of tomato seeds stuffed in a container in the basement. He finds a couple packets of sunflower seeds, mint seeds and basil seeds. It’s a little mismatched, as a garden, but he wants something to show for all his time here. He needs something to do; he’s never been good at gardening, he killed a cactus in college, but he wants something beautiful for Madison and the kids to come back to. He wants something growing and alive near him. So he kneels down, his knees pressing into the wet, soft dirt, and he digs. He digs and he plants the tomato seeds first, then the sunflowers, then the basil, and the mint last, patting each little dirt mound gently for good luck. He wipes his hands on his jeans and stands up, looking at his handiwork, squinting a little in the sun. It’s sunny five out of seven days a week here. It rains every Monday and Thursday, a light drizzle on Monday, and a thunderstorm on Thursday. He doesn’t know why the weather never changes, or why when he looks out past his yard, sometimes there’s nothing there. A blank expanse of nothing for miles around. Sometimes, when he concentrates, he can see the still, deep blue waters of Lake Tarawera, the hills beside it green and mossy, the mountain visible in the distance.  
He goes back inside, brews a fresh batch of coffee, and studies his root languages.

That night he dreams of Madison. She’s standing in a cemetery, fields of dead, yellowed grass shifting by her pale ankles; waves of golden weeds as far as he can see. She stands by a gravestone, her powder blue silk blouse rippling in the wind, her blonde waves tousled and wind tossed. She doesn’t see him. He tries to call to her, but no noise comes out, and before he can warn her, a hand is circling her ankle, pulling her under. She screams, fighting for purchase as the dirt and rocks skid beneath her hands. Travis rushes to action, grabbing her hands just as she starts to disappear from his view, just as she’s pulled under. He tries to hoist her up, but she’s all dead weight and limp limbs. Her eyes meet his and she gasps; he wants to save her; he wants to save her. Her palms slip from his grasp and she’s pulled away from him, falling down down. The dirt crumbles at the edge of the grave and falls in, burying her.

He wakes up gasping for breath, his tee soaked in sweat. His pulse flutters, and he can hear his blood rushing in his ears. He covers his face with his hands, and tries not to panic. He doesn’t know where Maddie is, but that couldn’t have been real, right? She must be safe. She’s tough, and he knows she’d do anything to stay alive for Alicia and Nick at least. She’s safe. She’s safe. He repeats it to himself over and over, but he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. He gets up out of bed, and makes his way through their house to the front door. He leans his forehead against the storm door, and watches his breath condense in puffs against the glass. He shuts his eyes tight, and goes outside. He sits next to his unborn plants, his knees folded up close to his chest, not even sprouts pushing up from the soft dirt yet. He digs a hand into the damp earth, and breathes in deeply. He tilts his head back and looks at the waning, sunflower yellow crescent moon, the white, bright stars puncturing the night sky. He digs down his hand down deeper, and stays there in the quiet of the night.

The next morning, he can’t shake Madison sinking below the surface of the Earth from his mind. Every time he blinks he can see her, her arms limp in the air, reaching for him, her mouth open in a silent gasp, as the ground crumbles and she falls. Travis can’t scrub it from his memory. He presses the heel of his palms tight against his eyelids and rubs his eyes, exhausted.  
He sighs and drags himself out of bed, and hops in the shower. In his exhausted state, he accidentally picks up Madison’s body wash and almost uses it, before he catches a whiff of what it smells like: sandalwood and lavender. It’s almost painful, being so viscerally reminded of her, of the fact that he can’t have her anymore, at least not now. She’s so far away, and he doesn’t know for sure when she’ll be back. If she’ll be back at all.  
It’s a waiting game. Travis knows that. He knows that he might end up waiting for Maddie forever, which scares him. A flash of Maddie smiling over her shoulder at him, a vision of Maddie at the supermarket, scrunching her nose at a bruised avocado, Maddie laughing at a dumb joke he had made, Maddie curled up in his arms, pushes to the forefront of his mind. He shakes his head, and presses a hand over his forehead, trying to quell the oncoming panic, nausea curdles his stomach; he feels like he’s going to vomit. He quickly steps out of the shower, and dries himself off. He slips on a pair of sweats and an old running tee and puts the kettle on. He pulls out Maddie’s favorite tea, and makes himself a cup. He sits on the couch and looks through old files on his laptop. In a hidden folder labelled ‘for madison’ he finds drafts upon drafts of his proposal to her.  
<strike></strike>

<strike>Dear Madison,</strike>  
<strike>Dear Maddie,</strike>  
Maddie,

I never really thought that I’d fall in love with you. There was a part of me that was afraid to love you, after Liza. I was terrified that we wouldn’t work out. But, this isn’t about that. The point of this is that I love you. I love how you brew coffee because you’re up before me. I love the way you smile. I love you because you love me too, even though you have a hard time saying it. I already think of you as my wife, but I want other people to see you that way too. I don’t really know what I'd do, the man I’d be, without you. I want the rest of my life with you, with only you. It’s you and the whole world out in front of me for me. I don’t need anything else.

I love you.  
Will you marry me?

When he did propose, however, he forgot everything. He didn’t give his official proposal speech to her, ever. When he did propose, she was washing the dishes, and for a minute, looking at Maddie, the warm light of the kitchen spinning through her hair as she scrubbed, the smell of cheap dish soap lingering in the air, minuscule bubbles clinging to the palms of her hands, he wanted the rest of his life with her. He’d been carrying around the ring for a couple weeks, so he pulled out the box, and started to kneel. She sees him moving out the corner of her eye, and reflexively turns her head, only to see him kneeling, a velvet ring box in his hand.

“What- what are you doing?” she asks, her eyes round with surprise.

“Madison, ” he starts anxiously. “Look, you don’t have to say anything yet. You can think about it, seriously. Even if we don’t get married, that’s okay. I just want you to be happy, and I love you. And I want every single day with you. I want you, for however long you want me to stay. ”

For a heart pounding second, she doesn’t say anything at all. She just looks at him in complete and utter shock, her hand covering her mouth.  
She’s smiling and she also might be crying, he’s a little too on edge to tell, and before he can ask what she’s doing, she’s kneeling down with him on the tiled kitchen floor. She reaches for his hand, leans her forehead against his. She closes her eyes, her hand wrapped around his, and he inhales sharply, closing his eyes.

“Yes.” she says. “Yes.” she repeats.

He starts a new notebook of Maori phrases and basic sentences. He taps his pen against the paper, and writes ‘kei te aroha au i a koe’ in lavender ink. Under ‘eng. translation’ on the same line he writes ‘i love you.’ He writes it again: kei te aroha au i a koe. I love you. He writes it over and over until he fills a whole page.

Travis goes to sleep that night and dreams of Paul R. Williams High. He dreams of Madison flirting with him in the teacher’s lounge. He found her once, leaning on her tip toes to reach her mug on the top shelf. Madison was naturally tall and lean, he had noticed, but someone, a taller colleague perhaps, had put her mug on the top shelf without thinking, leaving her without her daily caffeine fix. She hopped up and down to try to reach it, cursing quietly under her breath.

“Fuck, who put my mug up here? Come on- come on.” he hears her mumble, and he bites back a laugh.

He carefully moves behind her, leaving a few inches, for safety, for sanity, between them and reaches above her, grabbing her mug for her. She turns (almost in his arms, and he can’t stand that they’re so close and so far), and accepts his easy smile and his offer of her mug.

“Thanks.” she says

“No problem. I felt like I had to save you.” he returns.

“Oh really?” she inquires, one side of her mouth quirking up. “And what, Mr. Manawa, indicated that I couldn’t have done it myself? What exactly were you savin’ me from?”

“Well, I’m a good few inches taller than you, for one.” He crosses his arms over his chest and stands a little straighter, all too aware of the way her eyes trace his shoulders. “I had to save you from…” he thinks quickly. “Caffeine withdrawal.”

“Pfft.” she snorts. She delicately moves past him to the coffee maker, and fills her mug with black coffee. He checks his watch, a little disappointed that he couldn’t spend all day with Madison in the teacher’s lounge.

“I should probably run. I’m teaching first period.” He says, a little regretfully, double checking his watch just to be sure he couldn’t linger.

She looks over at him as he leans against the counter, unspoken tension crackling between them as he meets her gaze. She sets her mug down.

“I’ll walk with you,” Madison offers. “I’m headed that direction anyway.” she adds.

They walk together towards his classroom in relative silence before he stops in front of his room: 260C and says: “This is me.”

“Hey,” she says, grabbing his sleeve just as students start to filter in.

“Thanks again, for before.” Madison lifts her hand from his sleeve and runs her fingers slowly over his lapel, brushing minuscule particles of dust off his blazer. She lingers for a second longer than necessary, her pale green eyes meeting his, then darting away.

“Of course,” he replies, tempted to run his thumb over her knuckles, tempted to reach for her hand, tempted to cup her jaw and kiss her. “Anytime.”

“Okay,” she says quietly, “I gotta go.” She runs her thumbs over his lapels one last time before she leaves, walking towards the direction of her office. She looks back at him over her shoulder, and smiles. Travis smiles back.

Travis works his way through more of _Villette_, and studies up on his French so he can understand it better. He’s starting to remember more of what happened, before. He can remember the feeling of the bullet piercing his skin, pulling, ripping its way through his torso; he can remember it travelling up through his body and out his throat, the dull panic at realizing that he was going to die, the look on Alicia’s face. He can remember his split four seconds in the air. He knows what happened to him now. He’s dead. He’s dead.

When he goes to sleep that night, it doesn’t come easily. He’s not sure when exactly he and Madison became friends, and then more. She smiles at him in the hallways, and between flirty conversations in the teacher’s lounge, they become genuine friends. There’s always something more between them, though, something waiting to break. In the lounge, he tucks a blonde wavy strand behind her ear and he lingers; she looks up at him with her light eyes, an inquisitive look crossing over her face, and everything, all the noise in his mind goes quiet. He doesn’t know what to do next. It feels inappropriate, illicit somehow, to kiss her in public, to kiss her at their workplace, so he pulls away, disentangling his fingers from her hair.  
They have movie nights, sometimes, and there’s a part of him that wonders what this is. Are they dating?  
They watch Interstellar; Madison scrunches her nose at Matthew McConaughey’s Texan accent, and Travis smiles at her.

“Not a big McConaughey fan?” he prods. She shrugs in response.

“He’s not terrible. I always think of those goddamn car ads whenever I hear him.You know the ones where he talks about philosophical shit like: Sometimes it’s not the people who change, it’s the mask that falls off, or whatever, and then he ends up talking about a Lincoln Hybrid.” Surprised and a little taken aback by her spot on impersonation, Travis laughs.

“Oh yeah I know the ones. They’re awful.”

“God, I know. And,” she gestures to the screen. “What kinda dad just leaves his kids?” Travis shrugs.

“A bad one. I could never leave Chris.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t leave Alicia or Nick either. ” She pauses, thinking about what to say next while McConaughey’s sharp, angular face flashes on the screen in a sea of blue, grey and white. Hesitantly, she shifts a little closer, her side pressed up against his; he can smell her perfume: vanilla and a slight hint of lavender. She carefully rests her head on his shoulder, folding her legs beneath her and he wraps an arm on the back of the couch, his hand curled lightly around the ball of her shoulder.  
They stay like that for the rest of the movie.

He goes grocery shopping with her once, before they’re dating, and as he stands in line with her holding a bag of miscellaneous root vegetables, he notices a baby perched on his mother’s shoulder ahead of them. He nudges Madison gently, and she looks up from her phone to smile at the baby. She sticks her tongue out at the infant’s awestruck face, and the boy giggles sweetly, and Travis can’t help but feel like they crossed a line somewhere. That this is domestic. That they’re domestic. He knows all her favorite country songs, he knows her favorite novel (_The Grapes of Wrath_), he knows what happened to Stephen, he knows a little about her parents. She knows about Liza and Chris, she knows about his non-traditional parents, she knows how he grew up, a lonely Maori boy surrounded by white kids.  
They walk back to her car, the sunlight warm against the back of his neck. As he unloads her groceries into her car, her hand circles around his wrist, just below his watch. Her thumb presses gently over his pulse point.

“Hey,” she says, her thumb bumping against the face of his watch.

“Hey,” he raises an eyebrow at her, but reaches his other hand out to grasp the crook of her elbow. Sunlight cuts a diagonal stripe across over her face, illuminating one of her eyes as a pale ivy, the other dulled by shadow.

“Thanks for helping me with this. You’re always-” she cuts herself off, looking down.

“You’re always there to help, and I appreciate it.” her words come out in a rush. Slightly taken aback, a rush of high electricity anxiety shivering down his spine, he replies:

“Of course. Anytime.”

Madison’s shoulders drop, and her hand unwraps from around his wrist, and slides up to his shoulders, one hand pressed against the back of his neck.  
He’s barely breathing from the anticipation, and he cups her jaw with one hand, and places his other hand gently on her waist, like they’re slow dancing at the school dance all over again.  
She tilts her head up, like a flower growing towards the sun, and they’re forehead to forehead, chest to chest, hip to hip, like binary stars. Madison moves a little closer, and kisses him softly, a chaste, innocent thing. Her mouth is sun-warmed and dry, and he drags his thumb against the line of her jaw. Distantly, he feels her thumb tap once against the blade of his shoulder.  
After she pulls away, she holds his hand that isn’t on the wheel the whole way home, their fingers interlaced together.

The next day he works in his (their) garden. It’s too early for the plants to start sprouting, but the consistency of the sun’s heavy, warm rays is good for them. He plants more mint and more basil, and he’s careful to water the new seeds, to let them dry out in the sun. Travis leans back, looking at his handiwork and hopes that something, anything, will grow in the coming weeks. He goes back inside, having killed an hour at most, and wipes his sweaty brow. He brews coffee, and studies his declensions. He drinks his coffee, then takes a shower, washing the grime off. He reads a couple chapters of _Villette_, writes out a few Maori sentences, and then sits with himself.  
Sometimes he watches old films that he and Maddie used to watch together (when they were dating, before they were dating). Travis watches episodes of _The Twilight Zone_, _Casablanca_, _Citizen Kane_, and as Ingrid Bergman’s pretty 1940’s face fills up the screen, her nose mere inches away from Humphrey Bogart’s just as they’re about to kiss, he can’t help but feel despair well up in his chest.

When he hits the bed later that night, he dreams of Nick, shaking and paranoid in Madison’s kitchen. It was early in their relationship, and he had gotten up in the middle of the night, sleepily rubbing his face, to make a cup of tea. As he heads to the kitchen, he hears the door unlock and a series of shuffling sounds. It’s there, half asleep, that he finds Nick, his eyes glazed over, slumped at the kitchen table. Travis looks at Nick in a mix of blatant confusion and disbelief before he questions:

“Nick? Are you okay?”

Nick turns his head to look at him, his jaw shaking in an odd way, his pupils tiny dark dots in his eyes. His mouth opens to let out a shallow breath, and he tugs his sleeve down self consciously on one arm.

“Hi, Travis.” he says quietly, in a half-audible murmur.

Travis approaches carefully, not wanting to scare him. He gently pulls out the chair next to Nick’s at the table and sits down.

“What’s going on, man?”

“You can’t tell my mom I’m here.” Nick slurs, his eyes half-closed. Travis furrows his brows.

Nick repeats himself: “Please don’t Travis, seriously. Please-” He slumps down further on the kitchen table, his head lolling, Travis’ eyebrows raise, and he gently prods Nick on the arm.

“Hey Nick, come on buddy, stay up, come on,”

“It hurts.” Nick says, his head now buried in his arms. “It hurts, Travis. Fuck-”

“What does?”  
Nick sniffs, his voice cracking and wet-sounding.

“I don’t know, I just- it won’t- I can’t. Please, please don’t tell Mom, I don’t want her to worry. I’ll be fine. I’m fine.”

“Nick,” Travis rests a hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“Look, your mom, and I, all we want is to help you? Okay? No one’s going to hurt you. We just want you to feel okay. That’s all.”  
Nick’s left sleeve rides up and Travis catches little red wounds lining the inner side of Nick’s arm, and he notices tiny, pin pricked bruises on his hands.

“I don’t even know that you’re gonna stick around, man. That ‘we want to help you’ shit doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t going to be here for more than a couple months.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. I’m staying.”

Nick scrunches his nose reflexively, his eyes still glazed over, then he nods in acceptance.

“I gotta go.” Nick announces, standing up very slowly, as if he’s moving through gelatin, his arms hanging limply by his sides.

“Hey, wait, Nick, let me go get your mom, okay? Then we can talk about what to do next.” Nick shakes his head furiously, running his finger tips over his cheeks in an odd gesture.

“No, I left Glo there; I need to go back.” he protests, trying to make his way to the front door.

Before he can insist that Nick stay, Madison pokes her head into the kitchen.

“Travis? Babe what-” she catches Nick moving towards the door out of the corner of her eye, and she sighs.

“Nick, stay here for the night. Just- ” She looks down, her mouth a thin, angry line. “Stop running.”

“Mom, I didn’t want-” Madison presses her fingers to her temples and exhales slowly.

“Yeah, I know, baby, just please go to your room. For me?”

“Okay.” As he passes through the doorway from the kitchen to the bedrooms, Madison wraps a hand around Nick’s shoulder. Nick goes to bed, and Travis makes Maddie a cup of tea.  
She slumps down at the kitchen table where Nick sat before, her eyes half closed, her elbows resting on the table. The kettle bubbles as Travis sits next to Madison. He reaches out his hand to hold hers, and she turns away slightly.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. Trav, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want you to see him like that.” Madison says, looking down at the table, her fingers tracing an absent pattern against the wood grain.

“No, no sweetheart, I-” Travis starts, his hand squeezing hers. “It’s okay. Nick isn’t well, and I understand that. You don’t have anything to hide or to be ashamed of.”  
Madison stays silent, running her fingers over the table as the kettle starts to whistle. Travis gets up, breaking his grip from Madison’s hand to pour the water into her favorite mug.  
He places the chamomile tea in front of her, and retakes his seat at the table, steam rising in delicate curls up to the ceiling.

“Thank you.” she whispers, cupping her hands around the ceramic mug. Travis nods.

“You know,” Madison starts, “You don’t have to stay. If you don’t want to. I’d understand.”

Realization dawns on him, as he looks at her downcast eyes. Madison was telling him that she didn’t expect him to stay and deal with Nick; she was telling him that he was free to leave.

“Maddie,” he says, grazing his hand over her shoulder blades. “I’m not going anywhere. Never, okay? I’ll always be here.”

She inhales deeply, before murmuring: “Okay.”

“Come here.” Travis says, pushing his chair out to stand and opening his arms to her. Madison sips her tea and stands, folding herself in Travis’ arms. She closes her eyes, and he presses a kiss to the crown of her head.

“I want to stay.” he whispers to her, her cheek pressed against his chest.

“Seriously?” He can feel her lips curving into a half smile, pressing a ghost-like kiss against his chest.

“Seriously.”

When Travis wakes up, he has an unfamiliar ache in his chest, and his muscles feel hyper-stretched, and over-exerted. There’s a distant, far-away burn in his biceps, crawling down the backs of his calves. He goes back to sleep thinking of the way Maddie clung to him that night, safe in his arms. He dreams about Madison reaching out to him, the dirt near her ankles trembling. He reaches for her, and just as their fingers graze, the ground swallows her whole.  
The next morning, he brews his coffee, studies his Latin declensions and reads a couple chapters of Villette. He reminds himself to check on his plants, and looks out his window at the endless, heavy blue sky. It was a cloudless, sunny day, just like it was every Tuesday. He adds another spoonful of raw sugar to his coffee, and stirs. He goes outside to water his plants, taking a moment to look out across their yard, a flutter of blue waves and Mount Tarawera crossing over his line of sight before they disappear into thin air. Travis shakes his head, and goes back in to fill his watering can. Throughout the afternoon, he watches a few episodes of _The Twilight Zone_, his legs stretched out over the couch, trying not to think of how Maddie used to playfully say “scoot” (he’s starting to lose the way she pronounces certain consonants, the twang of her accent is more generalized in his mind now), and sit with him, her back pressed against his chest, his arm around her waist, her hand on his thigh. He’s starting to lose little things, like the exact color of her favorite stockings, the silky feeling of her blouse when he’s taking it off her, the shape of the tiny birthmark she had on her lower back. He’s starting to lose her, little by little, bit by bit, the longer he’s here.

He scrolls through old photos on his phone more and more now, trying to memorize everything. Sandwiched in between a shot of the vaguely unhappy looking trio of Alicia, Nick and Chris and a picture of Liza and Chris smiling at the zoo, is a video of Maddie. His eyebrows scrunch. What is this?  
He presses play and watches. The camera shakes a bit, and focuses in on Maddie. She bites her bottom lip in concentration, trying to hide a smile as she puts finishing touches on a chocolate cake. A smear of vanilla frosting clings to her ring finger as she sticks the dotted pink candles in a circle around the top of the cake. Maddie lights the candles, the light flickering across her face, shadows curving over the bridge of her nose and under her bottom lip. She turns to smile at the camera, a strand of her wavy blond hair escaping from her low ponytail and clinging to the side of her cheek. The camera moves in closer, and Travis sees his hand brush her cheek, and Maddie’s fingers circle around his wrist, her engagement ring sparkling.

“When’s Alicia coming home?” Travis hears himself ask. He lets his hand drop.

“Any second now.” Maddie says as she stands from her chair, drowning in one of his shirts and a pair of dark wash jeans. The key turns in the lock, and Alicia’s voice calls: “Anyone home?”

“In the kitchen,” Maddie responds, grinning as she turns to the camera, mouthing ‘Ready? One, two, three...’

The camera zooms in on the doorway into the kitchen and Alicia steps through, looking down at her phone. She glances up at the cake and just as a smile breaks across her face, Travis hears Maddie and himself yell: “Happy Birthday!”  
The video ends there, frozen on Alicia’s shocked grin and Maddie’s body twisted towards Alicia, moving to hug her daughter, the lit candles casting big, dramatic shadows across the walls. Travis puts his phone down, and leans back in his chair at the kitchen table. He stares up at the ceiling, and wonders if he can contact Maddie.  


He opens messages and reads his last text to her.  
T: Coming home now w/ Italian from Vinnie’s. See you soon.  
M: <3  
He sighs, and rolls his shoulders back. He types out a text, and hesitates before he presses send. He closes his eyes. He sends it.  
T: Are you here?

He never gets a text back.

He starts having disjointed dreams, visions of rotting flesh off of emaciated bodies, blood pooling over floors, crushed skulls, Madison’s worried look as her hand curls over his cheek and pulls away. He wakes up gasping in the middle of the night. Travis doesn’t reach for his wife, instead, he turns away from her side of the bed and tries to go back to sleep.

He dreams of two white boys, their faces bruised and bloody. One of them, the dirty blond, is pressed up against a set of wooden shelves, his face and neck gripped by (Travis’) hands, his neck starting to twist at a grotesque, unnatural angle as the boy’s doughy hands try to push him away weakly. Travis, breathing heavily, yells: “Tell me the truth! Tell me the truth! Where’s my son?” He twists and slams the boy against the shelves, his face contorts in pain, teeth gritting, tiny, vicious pockets of stolen air puffing against Travis’ neck. Through the window, he sees Maddie, her hair looser, oilier, panic in her eyes as she taps against the wall, screaming “Travis!” She taps again, and they’re face to face for a moment, her fingers spread in a five shape along the dirty glass.

“Please, please let him go!” and then to another man she shrieks: “Get the goddamn keys!” Travis turns his attention away from her.

The other boy, blue eyed and brown haired, begs on the floor: “We’ll tell you, man! We’ll tell you if you promise to stop! Please. please,” he gasps, air trapped in his lungs, blood already starting to crust, sticky and half-dry under his nose. Madison taps against the door, more insistently this time, but he pays no attention, as the boy admits to shooting Chris. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. They killed his son. His little boy.

He doesn’t even remember how he hit the blue eyed boy, but he knows he shatters his jaw from the sound it makes and the pain that shoots through his fingers. He throws him against the door as the kid flails, twists, and as he presses the boy’s face against the window, he catches Maddie’s face again from the other side. Travis twists and wrenches, the blue eyed kid screaming, and hears the crack of his arm, feels the dead weight as it curls limply, sickeningly towards the boy’s side. The boy slides to the ground and he punches him, uncoordinated, rough. He lands another hit or two before Travis himself gets hit, right in the face. It whips his head back, and his neck aches, but he pushes forward, driving the kid to an old printer and he cracks his skull against the glass surface, watches it shatter, as it tips over and the boy groans. He kicks him as he lies on the floor, breaking his ribs and sending his arm flying up towards the ceiling. The boy rolls over, blood streaking his pink, inflamed face, arms turned towards his abdomen, twitching. Maddie screams his name; he hears the jangle of keys and he, unthinkingly, smashes the door in the man’s skull and he slides to the floor.

The lock clicks, and Travis smells the sharp scent of blood, before the dirty blond boy breaks an old, wooden chair over Travis’ back. He kicks Travis right in the gut, his abdomen flinching in response, before he trips the blond boy as he moves away, the kid’s twisting in the air like Michelangelo's _Cupid_. They scramble on the floor, sliding awkwardly away from each other as Travis fights for purchase on the white, tile floor. He gains the upper hand, punching the boy as his blond, still-downy head whips to the side, blood and spit spraying from his mouth and dripping on the white, white floor. He chokes him and the kid’s hands curl loosely around Travis’ elbows as blood gets trapped in his lungs. The boy gurgles wetly, his blood, mucus and spit splattering in Travis’ face. He shivers, and tries to reach for the other one, who is curled up on the floor, before Travis grabs the dirty blond and flings him through the glass door. He stays still. The other one, writhing in pain, tries to move away from Travis, but he can’t escape, so he pleads, sobbing.

“No, please. Please, please, pl-” Travis lines his head up with his heavy boot and crushes his skull, the sound echoing around the room, his blood pooling on the floor. He catches his breath, gasping for air; he can feel the blood, thick in the inside of his mouth, smeared against his teeth. Travis walks to the back end of the room, collapses against the wall and breathes. Maddie’s face looms through the window, the crease between her eyebrows pronounced with worry.

Travis wakes up with his breath trapped in his throat, in a tangle of sweat-damp sheets, his arms pinwheeling up towards the ceiling. He almost falls out of bed as bile rises in his throat, and also just manages to make it to the garbage in the kitchen as he vomits, the acidic taste burning the inside of his mouth. Travis dry-heaves, his eyes watering, as his hands grip the sides of the metallic can. He slumps against the side of the can when he’s done, exhausted and panicked. He heads to the bathroom and brushes his teeth furiously, notes the tired look in his eyes and how his curls are starting to fall into his eyes. He uses mouthwash, staining the inside of the sink a translucent blue before it swirls down the drain.

He goes back to the bedroom, taking in Madison’s empty side, the drawers of the dresser lighter without her clothes to fill them, none of her jewelry beside the little, round, silvery mirror on her nightstand. A patch of moonlight paints a rectangle on the hardwood floor, and he falls to his knees. His head bows. He doesn’t sleep the rest of the night; the smell of blood, sharp and iron, is still too fresh in his nose, the boy’s waning heartbeat still fluttering under his hands as Travis kills him.


End file.
